Crime reporter Phil Davis was in the office when the alleged shooter killed five of his colleagues.
“Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees,” he tweeted.
He was taking cover under a desk when it happened.
“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload,” he said.
Taking cover under desks with others, Davis said the shooter suddenly stopped firing.
“I don’t know why he stopped,” he told the Baltimore Sun.
Davis was among 170 people evacuated from the building, which has 29 other tenants beside The Gazette.
Still shaken from the incident and waiting to be interviewed by police, he started reporting what had happened, describing it in the Baltimore Sun as "like a warzone".
“I’m a police reporter. I write about this stuff — not necessarily to this extent, but shootings and death — all the time,” he said.
“But as much as I’m going to try to articulate how traumatising it is to be hiding under your desk, you don’t know until you’re there and you feel helpless.”
Show must go on, reporters insist
Photographer Josh McKerrow and reporter Chase Cook were frantically calling and texting friends and colleagues inside the newsroom, as the police SWAT team swarmed the site, attempting to secure the building and evacuate those inside.
Numb from the death of his colleagues, Mr Cook determined that the best act of defiance was to do what the shooter had wanted to stop: put out the paper’s next edition.
“I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow,” he said on Twitter, two-and-a-half hours after police arrived on the scene.
Mr McKerrow, who was on his way home to his daughter's birthday when he got the call from editor Rick Hutzell to turn back, described his emotional state in one word: “heartbroken”.
Posting his photographs at the scene on Twitter, he also reassured concerned colleagues and friends that he and six other colleagues were accounted for and safe.
He also wrote of his determination that “There will be a Capital Friday.”
‘We do all this to serve our community’
Editor for the Capital, Jimmy DeButts called for privacy, saying he is “numb”.
“There are no 40 hour weeks, no big paydays - just a passion for telling stories from our community,” he said in a series of messages posted on Twitter.
DeButts said despite the incident, his faith in the importance of the work being done at the paper was unshaken.
“We do our best to share the stories of people, those who make our community better. Please understand, we do all this to serve our community,” he said.
The tweets have encouraged an outpouring of messages of support and solidarity from journalists around the globe, including in Australia and Canada.
‘We are a family’
Reporter Danielle Ohl was on vacation in the Outer Banks when the shooting happened.
She said she is “devastated”, revealing that colleague Rachael Pacella is one of at least three people receiving hospital treatment for injuries.
Police have confirmed that at least five people are dead.
She said the local newspaper staff of 20 are a tightknit group.
“The Capital is not a big newsroom,” she said in a message on Twitter. “There are about 20 news staffers, a few more advertising. We are close. We are family. I am devastated.”
Issuing a call for privacy, she thanked people for their messages of support.
